The Pirates game plan was about as hard to spot as Taylor Strohecker. And the first-half lead they built behind her was almost as tall.

The Ignacio High School girls basketball team spent two quarters struggling to figure out how to keep the ball out of the hands of the 6-2 Strohecker, but she wasted no time figuring out how to keep the ball going into the hoop.

Lob. Catch. Score. Repeat.

“It was all mental,” Strohecker said. “Know what I had to do.

“And I did it.”

Strohecker scored more than half of the Pirates’ points, including 15 of her 22 total in the first half, to push Pagosa to a lead that also would prove too tall for the Bobcats to overcome: The Pirates beat the Bobcats 42-29 on Tuesday night at IHS.

“The big girl was just huge,” Ignacio’s Michelle Simmons said.

Strohecker said the speed of Tuesday’s game in the packed-house IHS gymnasium worked to the Pirates’ advantage.

Ignacio never led as Pagosa built a lead of as much as 12 in the first half before the 25-15 score at the intermission, despite the fact that three Pirates made up all but two points of their scoring.